Page 29 of Trust and Obey

Eyes flying open, I glanced at the clock on the bedroom nightstand. Four-fifty in the morning.

Oh, crap. I had managed to sleep the entire night in a guest villa.

This was bad. The resort offered us a lot of personal freedom but sleeping with the guests was a huge no-no. Plus, because we lived on an island with some adventuring and guided tours, for safety reasons we were required to badge in and out of the main employee lodging every night. If someone cared to look, they would see that I certainly hadn’t checked in.

“Kendall?” Deacon rolled over onto his back and opened his eyes, looking yummy and debauched within a nest of messed up blankets. “You okay, babe?”

My heart melted a little at the endearment, but I steeled myself against it. “Yeah. I just realized I overslept. I gotta get out of here.”

Deacon’s brow furrowed. “You sure you can’t stay? It has to be—wait, what time is it?”

“Still late enough that I won’t get in trouble if I sneak back.” Probably. Maybe. I leaned over and dropped a kiss on the side of his mouth. “Go back to sleep. I’ll be by with breakfast in the morning.”

He smiled at me, still dopey and loose from sleep, and his eyes slid shut. “You’re the best…” He mumbled something completely unintelligible, but I suspected he’d just said, ‘You’re the best boyfriend.’

Again, my heart wanted to melt. But reality quickly asserted itself.

As quickly and quietly as I could, I scrambled around the room and found my uniform. My underwear was nowhere to be seen, but since I was the one who was going to do the cleaning up later as part of my duties, I wasn’t too concerned.

Sunlight hadn’t yet crept over the horizon as I opened the door and stepped outside. The night was still. We usually stopped piping in the obnoxious bird sound song from the speakers in the trees around one in the morning.

I walked down the wooden pathway, trying to appear like I was out on very important business. Right now, I had no time to get stopped by a guest looking for directions or a drink.

Of course, that was when I ran into my manager.

He spotted me first because he called out, “Sir? Can I help you?”

I froze in place for a guilty second which allowed him to catch up. I knew when he had gotten close enough to see who I was because he said, “Oh. Kendall?”

Turning to him, I resisted the urge to run a hand back through my hair to settle it into place. Did it look like bed head? Or did it look like I had stayed up all night?

“Andy.” I didn’t have to pretend my surprise. “Isn’t it a little late for you to be out?”

“Villa twenty had an issue with their garbage disposal. Maintenance wasn’t available and so the ‘emergency’ got routed to me.”

I winced. You would think that a garbage disposal breaking down wouldn’t require an emergency ticket, but some guests literally could not sleep unless everything was exactly as pristine as they had paid for, and more. “One of those, huh?” I hooked a finger back behind me to Deacon’s villa. “This one, too. I took him out hiking last night. He seemed fine when I dropped him off, but then he called in the middle of the night saying his back was tight. He needed a massage ASAP.”

I thought the excuse was solid but could tell that Andy didn’t believe one word coming out of my mouth.

“Is that so,” he said flatly.

I shrugged. “He better tip well. That’s all I’m saying.”

Andy looked carefully from me to the villa and back again. “And you got the massage table from…”

“Oh.” I smiled. “I just used the bed. Left him snoozing like a baby.”

Andy sighed. “Listen, I’m a manager, so it’s my job to step in for maintenance calls, but having a masseuse visit in the middle of the night… It’s not a good look. You get what I’m saying?”

Well, yeah, because he was being about as subtle as a dump truck through a China shop.

“Yeah, I understand,” I said. “But it was just a massage.” As in, he was massaging my prostate…

“Sure,” Andy said. “But if you want my advice, Kendall, if a call like that comes again, don’t answer it. CYA. You know what that stands for?”

“Cover your ass?”

“Exactly.” And Andy had the audacity to clap me on the shoulder and walk past me, returning the plunger and drain snake back to the maintenance office.

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